Long Beach Township will join Harvey Cedars to ban plastic shopping bags from their town.

Businesses will be prohibited from using single-use plastic carryout bags. Customers will have to bring their own reusable bags to stores, or pay a small fee for recycled paper bags.

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Ordinance 17-31C says that no business or store (including but not limited to pharmacies, supermarkets, convenience stores, surf shop, and restaurants) can give single-use plastic carryout bags to customers.

There are a few exceptions: tackle shops may still use plastic bags for bait, and bags may also be used for raw meat and produce at grocery stores.

The whole point is to keep plastic bags off our beaches and out of our oceans. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that as many as one trillion plastic bags are used worldwide each year, with less than 5% of them being recycled.

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